Bainbridge man aims at Alaska in the journey of a lifetime

BREMERTON — Twenty-five years ago, rock bottom was at a brothel-drug house in Kent.

A woman there had fronted Steve Rhoades a large package of cocaine to sell at bars up and down Seattle’s Pacific Highway, and in a few days, he and some friends had blown through it themselves, leaving him no money to pay to an angry supplier. He expected the barrel of a gun to be pointed his way soon.

After he drank himself out of the military in the 1970s, he’d been homeless and bouncing around the country from place to place for years, working here, dealing drugs there, sticking out his thumb on highways, blowing with the wind to wherever the next party presented itself, he says.

After the Marines, it was back home to Indiana, then following hopes of becoming a stuntman in Hollywood, then to New Orleans to see Mardi Gras, then working on oil rigs and living his days off drunk in the French Quarter. In San Francisco, he’d sleep in dumpsters, ever fearful of being killed overnight. Eventually, it was off to Seattle with his brother, hoping to sign on to a commercial fishing vessel headed to Alaska.

His addictions, the drugs, the alcohol, they were a boot heel stepping on the little green sprouts of any productive notions in his life. Rhodes reached his nadir at that house in Kent.

“I’d burnt every bridge, every bridge,” he says, now 64. “That was my bottom.”

In a bathroom in that house, he sank to his knees and sent a prayer heavenward, looking for help, a chance, something, and for the first time in his life, he says, he really meant it. It was the beginning of his life’s winding redemption arc.

“I knew at that point, I knew I didn’t have anywhere else,” he says. “I didn’t want to go back downtown to live on the streets again. I was tired. I was fed up. I wanted something different.”

But that was the only place that would have him, in his mind, so he walked outside, crossed the street and boarded a bus to head downtown without even the money to cover his fare once he got there.

It’s a chilly January morning, and Puget Sound is rolling up and down the shoreline at Fay Bainbridge Park. It’s a good day to pull up a blanket, to stay indoors, to sit by a fire. For Steve Rhoades, it’s a good day to train for the trip of a lifetime.

Rhoades hauls his long paddleboard down to the churning water, pulls his wetsuit up over his head and tucks his hair back under the hood, sealing himself up from the cold. He grabs his board and shoves out into the surf.

He pops up onto the board and begins to propel himself, not with a paddle, but with his own two gloved hands, while lying on his belly. Winds gust around him but he bobs up and down in the water, riding crest to trough with all the anxiety found in a Sunday afternoon nap.

The waves are a good challenge as he prepares for a paddling journey hundreds of miles long this summer. At this same park in June, he’ll shove off, his board packed full of supplies, and begin the slow, churning paddle from Bainbridge to Port Townsend.

There, he’ll rest briefly before launching again, bound for Ketchikan, Alaska, as part of Race to Alaska, a challenging contest that sends a handful of entrants each year 750 miles up along the coast of British Columbia to the small city on the Alaskan Panhandle, all without a motor or any support.

In the race, sailboats, kayaks or rowboats are common. Since Race to Alaska was founded in 2015, three entrants have attempted the journey on a stand-up paddleboard and just one has completed it, on his second try. Rhoades would be the first to finish the race while paddling prone.

From Port Townsend, Rhoades will paddle across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and make his way north. He expects it’ll take him roughly two months. There will be no support RV for him to sleep in at night, no chase vehicle toting his supplies. He’ll carry limited necessities with him, sleep in a hammock on the shoreline at night and pop into a series of towns and communities he’s planned out when his food runs low.

Steve Rhoades’ support team will consist of one person: Steve Rhoades.

The winner of Race to Alaska gets a cool $10,000 payout, and second place claims a pretty good set of steak knives. But for Rhoades, the journey is a springboard for spreading his message, one he’ll tell to anyone who asks while he does regular ministry walks in downtown Seattle: I got off the street, you can, too.

“There’s so much help out there for these guys, but you’ve got to want it,” he says. “You’ve got to change your whole life.”